Course overview: Introduction to programming
                           concepts
         • What is a program?
         • The Python programming language
         • First steps in programming
         • Program statements and data
         • Designing programs.
       This part will give an introduction to general programming
       concepts, and to the Python programming language.
                               1
       Textbook and web
        • We recommend a basic Python textbook such as “Python in
         easy steps” (Mike McGrath)
        • Python can be downloaded for free from
         http : //python.org/downloads
        • In this course the computers already have Python installed.
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       What is a program?
        • A program is a set of instructions which control a computer
         (laptop, desktop, tablet, etc)
        • Programs can be written for huge variety of tasks: performing
         complex computations; financial trading; computer graphics
         and games; medical diagnosis and data processing; aircraft
         autopilot, etc
        • Programs can read data from computer keyboard, mouse
         movements and actions, from data files, databases and any
         other sensors/data sources on the computer – and from
         internet if connected.
        • Programs can present information graphically on computer
         screen, can write to text files, or update any other device
         connected to computer – if permitted to do so.
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       What is a program?
       Aset of instructions, in a particular order.
       Example of simple program (expressed in English, not a
       programming language):
       read a number X
       read a number Y
       calculate Z = (X + Y) divided by 2
       display Z
       This computes average of two numbers, eg: for X = 203, Y = 1965,
       displays 1084.
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